On any given afternoon when I was in elementary school, my friend, Dana Fleming, and I could be found balancing on either side of some railroad tracks.

We’d follow this path until we got to Knox Street, where we would either grab a malt at Highland Park Pharmacy or an afternoon snack at Chili’s.

With either one we chose, we surely ruined our appetites for dinner.

Today, the same pathway we walked along couldn’t be more popular; now, there are crossing paths at Knox Street and Harvard Avenue where we used to run through breaks of traffic.

The Katy Trail has been developed and popular for years now, but there is at least one other location that is using underutilized land for a trail. It’s worked in the past, and some people are thinking it will work again.

On the Trinity Strand Trail, there is already some concrete down on the pathway that winds beside the Old Meanders.

The Old Meanders is the waterway that was once the Trinity River. After a major flood in 1908, the river was rerouted to the west, in between levees and where we know it to be today.

After finding this out, I went straight to Our City Dallas, an interesting read from 1927, when author Justin F. Kimball took a look at the city and the plans George E. Kessler had for it.

In one chapter of this book, Kimball discusses flood after flood. In 1866, for example, a flood more than 49 feet was reported: “The Dallas newspaper of that time says that Dallas stood on an island; that the only road that was impassable because of deep water was the one which follows the present line of Ross Avenue, and there were places on that road where the water was very deep,” he wrote.

It’s no wonder the river’s former location was a problem. The flood of 1908 was recorded as reaching 52.6 feet.

“Mr. Kessler told us that the simplest and cheapest way of managing the Trinity is by straightening its channel, cutting out the bushes, trees and weeds that now fill the bottom lands, and by building levees above flood level on each side of the river,” he wrote.

I guess the rest is history; but as for Old Meanders’ former spot, there wasn’t much going on, said Shelly White, executive director of the Friends of the Trinity Strand Trail.

White, along with other trail volunteers, think the look of the area will soon change.

She believes businesses will eventually back up to the trail — doorways in back, porches overlooking it — a sight that would be more pleasant to look at than the brick walls that now line the area, she said.

For more on the current state and future plans of this trail, read this week's cover story.

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